Automattic, the company behind top digital publishing platform WordPress, has raised $160 million in venture funding at a valuation of $1.16 billion, Chief Executive Matt Mullenweg said.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg

Reuters

Insight Venture Partners led the round with participation from Chris Sacca, Endurance, True Ventures, Tiger Global and Iconiq Capital. Mullenweg said in a personal blog post that the funding was a direct investment into the company, its first since 2008. Tiger Global and Iconiq Capital previously made secondary investments in which they bought Automattic equity from existing shareholders.

While companies raising large late-stage rounds at lofty valuations often have their sights set on an IPO, Automattic intends to remain a private company for some time. “We now have the liquidity to build the company to the next level without needing to turn to the public for money,” Mullenweg said.

With the funding, whose valuation was reported earlier by Re/Code, the nine-year-old company plans to grow its staff; improve its offering beyond the English-, Spanish- and German-language speaking markets; and to potentially acquire other startups.

The WordPress parent company employs about 250 full-time across 35 countries and 190 cities.

Mullenweg said the growth of mobile devices has had a big impact on Automattic’s business for the better.

When mobile first came on the scene, he said, his company thought people would consume more short-form content on mobile devices. In actuality, he said, “With mobile, people are writing more and consuming more, but they’re just as comfortable consuming long-form [content] on phones and tablets as they were on a desktop.”

Two-thirds of WordPress traffic comes from outside of English-language markets, Mullenweg said, but about one-quarter of the company’s revenue (which comes from sales of professional-grade versions of WordPress) is from users in English-language-speaking markets.

The CEO is preparing for a June tour of countries in Asia and the Pacific Rim including Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, where he will be giving talks and connecting with existing and prospective WordPress partners, developers and authors, he said.

Companies that help people self-publish or create content and websites on behalf of a business have been raking in venture funding of late.

Last month, WordPress competitor Squarespace raised $40 million in a round led by General Atlantic, and Imgur raised $40 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz to help users create and share meme-worthy images.

In January, NewsCred raised $25 million for a marketplace that connects journalists and professional copywriters with brands that want to commission and publish their work for marketing purposes.

According to research by W3Techs, WordPress currently commands more than half of the global market for content management systems, with alternatives like Joomla, Drupal and Blogger lagging far behind.

Investors in the Automattic deal were not immediately available for comment.